I have been traveling the world as a journalist and passionate lover of all things fun for 20 years. I have had weekly columns in USA Today and Investors Business Daily, published thousands of articles in leading magazines from Playboy to Popular Science, and am the author of Getting Into Guinness. I am the Contributing Travel Editor for Cigar Aficionado Magazine, the restaurant columnist for USAToday.com, and am a co-founder of TheAPosition.com, the leading golf travel website. I love every kind of travel, active, cultural and leisurely, and my special areas of expertise are luxury hotels and resorts, golf, skiing, food, wine and spirits. I tweet @TravelFoodGuy

Great Urban Weekend Escapes: Indianapolis

Did you know there was a giant canal running through downtown Indianapolis, complete with bike path, kayak and Segway rentals, even gondolas from Venice?

Today I am launching a new recurring feature, “Great Urban Weekend Escapes,” along the lines of my semi-regular “Hotels I Love.”

I travel a lot and I talk to a lot of fellow travelers. Oddly, I know more people here in the States who have been to Paris, Rome and London than to Memphis, Austin or Charleston – all fabulous vacation destinations.

The problem with the world’s most fabled vacation cities is that they require a lot of time. Visit New York or Florence for the very first time in just a weekend and you are going to miss more highlights than you are going to see. So in recent years, I have become a big fan of smaller – but no less welcoming – cities, those that make for perfect weekend or long weekend escapes. With the shorter amount of vacation time in America and our increasingly hectic, over-scheduled lives, a weekend getaway allows for a quick change of venue and recharge. Instead of the beach or countryside for a short escape, there are good reasons to visit a city: culture, entertainment, great food, and lots to do.

My basic rules for what makes a great weekend city include at least one standout attraction, be it a museum or something else, maybe Graceland or The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or The Alamo, something you have always wanted to see. It must have unique or diverse cuisine well worth eating, while natural attractions, great lodging and shopping are all pluses. As an added bonus, these cities are typically less expensive than their bigger counterparts even for the most luxurious lodgings, easier to get to with more functional airports close to downtown, and they are usually easy to get around.

If you live in one of these cities I feature, please take your selection as a complement. I’m not suggesting your hometown is only “worth” a couple of days. After all I live in a town whose entire population could fit inside the MGM Grand hotel in Vegas. Rather I’m saying your city is user-friendly enough to be enjoyed in a weekend – maybe the first of many weekend visits.

Think this famous statue is from New York or Philly? Wrong, the original is outside the art museum in Indy.

Indianapolis is at the top of my list because it combines so many surprising, high-profile attractions with true Midwestern hospitality, yet hardly anyone I know has visited as a tourist. They should. I wrote earlier this year about what a superlative job Indy did with the Super Bowl, one of the very best venues, in a way much larger cities like Dallas and New York can’t hope to equal. This should come as little surprise, since the city has annually hosted the world’s largest single one day sporting event, the Indianapolis 500, the mother of all auto races – for over a century. It is a bucket list sporting event to attend, but even if you never make it to the race, you can still enjoy the city’s most famous attraction.

The legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway, aka “The Brickyard,” is a must-visit sight any other day of the year. The museum here is open 364-days (closed Christmas) even during the Indy 500 and NASCAR’s Brickyard 400, and on non-race days, offers visitors a ride around the fabled 2 ½ mile oval in a special shuttle. Inside is one of the world’s greatest collections of rare and exotic cars, so many that they have to be rotated in and out of storage regularly, part of an ever changing display that also covers the history of the track and auto racing itself. On most days you can experience the thrill of speed with “hot laps” around the track, using an actual Indy car that has been modified with a second seat behind the driver, a pro racer who has actually competed in the Indy 500. The pull of centrifugal force in every turn is like nothing you have ever felt in a car. Or, if you prefer, you can even drive yourself!

Visiting golfers will be surprised to find that the Speedway is home to a world-class course by Indianapolis resident Pete Dye, the most awarded living designer. Brickyard Crossing, which used to host a Senior PGA event, is truly one-of-a-kind: four holes play inside the infield of the oval track, often with loud cars running by on test laps, linked by a tunnel to the fourteen holes just outside the stadium. The course is just one strop in Indiana’s new Pete Dye Golf Trail.

But Indy is no one hit wonder – besides the Speedway, it is also home to the largest children museum in the world. With life-sized dinosaurs bursting through its exterior walls, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is not just the biggest, it is consistently ranked the best of its kind in the U.S. (I wrote about the 12 Best Children’s Museums in the country for Forbes.com). The Venice of the Midwest, Indy also has the fantastic 1 ½ mile Central Canal running right through downtown. This water and greenway is flanked with walking/biking/Segway paths, and offers rental kayaks, pedal boats and even gondolas, imported from, yes, Venice. And romance? Most people think the famous square, red LOVE statue seen in New York and Philadelphia comes from one of those museum-filled cities. Wrong. Those are just facsimiles of Robert Indiana’s (really) famous four letter artwork – the 3-ton original is displayed on the 150-acre campus of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Numerous Olympic teams are based here, along with the headquarters of the NCAA, whose Hall of Champions museum features displays on all of the 23 competitive sports it sanctions that are played by American collegians.

Alexander Ralston, who designed the city, also helped lay out the plan for Washington, DC, which explains Indy’s downtown circles and countless monuments.

Indy’s compact downtown is super easy to navigate, and in its heart is the Circle Center Mall, where more than 100 shops are linked to a dozen major downtown hotels by enclosed walkways that are cool in summer and warm in winter, including the Westin, one of only three Conrad’s in the country and the nation’s largest JW Marriott, all good choices. At the opposite end of the size spectrum but high on charm is the 6-room Villa Inn, a city-style bed and breakfast in an Italianate brick mansion. The new 8-mile pedestrian and bike only Cultural Trail links the six major tourist neighborhoods, and nearly all the major attractions are on this path, including the Central Canal, with most downtown hotels offering bicycles.

No one goes home hungry from Indianapolis, where you’ll find one of the nation’s most iconic steakhouses, St. Elmo – which just won the 2012 James Beard Award as an American classic (I wrote about the historic eatery in detail for my USA Today Great American Bitescolumn). True to its Midwestern roots, the city’s most traditional meal is the fried pork tenderloin sandwich, and locals will debate endlessly which of the many places specializing in them are best. Try one. There is also a fast growing craft beer culture and Indy has jumped on the localvore trend, with many up and coming chefs here specializing in regional Midwestern produce and meats.

The city’s excellent airport is less than four 3 years old, a $1.1 billion state of the art facility. There is actually a lot more stuff to see and do, without even attending one of the city’s endless array of big time sporting events, but hey, that should be more than enough reasons to make a Great Urban Weekend Escape to Indianapolis.

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In addition to what is mentioned in the article, NYT did a story about all the international restaurants in Indy. Better yet, get this month’s Indianapolis magazine that has an extensive review of these restaurants, you’ll need it to find them as most are off the beaten path. An excellent source to find what is happening is a site, do317.com Enjoy

Thank you for the great article on Indianpolis. I live in Indianapolis and enjoy the amenities you have written so well about. Next time you visit here –suggest you go to the Zoo. It is a great one and you can walk to it –along with many other amenities–from central downtown. Also maybe consider attending a performance of the Indianapolis Symphony–you will enjoy that and the performance venue–the Hilbert theatre as well. Again the symphony performs right down town “on the circle”. Keep up this series on urban “get-a-ways”. I think many will appreciate them and I look forward to reading the next one.